Wednesday, September 16, 2015

"I bet your life", cannabis chemistry edition

Paul Loney, with offices in Portland and Ashland, in the state’s far south, has a practice in transition. “I used to do a lot of criminal defence,” he says, but since legalisation a lot of enforcement has simply stopped. “Now I help people with compliance.”

They also need to carry out lab testing – some because the state demands it (laws forbid the use of certain pesticides), some because of consumer demand for guaranteed purity and potency. Cannabis labs already provide employment for biologists and chemists; what’s now a cottage industry will soon grow along with the industry.

If you want to make guaranteed money from pot, go to law school or get your masters in industrial chemistry.

Color me skeptical. I think the likeliest way to earn guaranteed money from pot is at your local college campus doing door-to-door distribution.

(Where does one get a master's degree in "industrial chemistry", anyway? Is there a single program in the United States that offers such a degree?* (*Google tells me I am wrong: there are two such programs, one at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Texas, both "professional science master's" programs. An interesting idea, but probably not really all that different than any other state university master's program, for those who find this post via Google.)